Musings of a geek.

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Apple has announced that anyone can join download and install beta versions of OS X. You’ll no longer need a paid Apple Developer account. This means anyone can and will be able to download the beta OS X versions.

This means anyone will be able to download beta versions of OS X. This is bad. Every year, after WWDC and the new version of iOS is announced and the beta is released, people scour the internet looking for the beta iOS and will pay a few dollars to join someone’s developer account just the use the newly released beta on their iPhones. The beta that is loaded with bugs and broken features. These people then proceed to complain about their phone not working properly.

I can see why Apple wants to allow more people to test the software, but if the people using the program are just doing it to get the beta, and don’t treat it as such, Apple isn’t going to get any benefit.

I was finally able to get out and go for a bike ride. First time on the bike since January. Beautiful weather is finally arriving in central NY. I attempted to ride a few days ago but there was still too much snow on the seasonal roads for my skinny tired Mamba.

This time I brought the freshly cleaned and tuned up Moonlander, and was very glad I did. The snow that was left was very soft. I ended up airing the tires down to about 3 psi just to get some decent traction through the snow. Just for reference, I normally ride around 5-6psi with 4.8in wide tires on the Moonlander.

I ended up riding for 6-7 miles as best as I could tell. I don’t have a computer on my bike to tell me exactly what I did, and while I carry my iPhone, I don’t run a GPS app either. It felt good to be back out on the bike again, and surprisingly, my legs and ass aren’t killing me.

The upcoming forecast has rain and some snow in the beginning of the week, but should clear up. I’d like to be able to get a few rides in this week.

My biggest complaint about winter biking is cold feet. Now that I converted to clipless pedals, I don’t like to trail ride with flat pedals. Wearing my regular snow boots on flats is even worse, as my feet were sliding all over the pedals.

If I wear my normal clipless shoes in the winter, my feet end up freezing, even with heavy wool socks. The steel plate in the bottom of the shoe, with an uninsulated shoe draws all the heat from your foot. Last time I rode in the winter with my clipless shoes, I nearly got frostbite on my toes.

Unfortunately, winter boots designed for clipless riding are expensive. They all start over $200, and some are even more. That’s a lot of money for a pair of shoes that a purpose built and only used part of the year. Well, I broke down and ordered a pair of 45nrth Wolvhammer boots.

The Wolvhammers are the best rated winter boots for clipless riding. Several of my friends have them, and have replaced other clipless boots with Wolvhammers. I’m eagerly awaiting for next winter when I’ll be able to ride with warm feet.

Radio Shack is planning on closing 1100 of their worst performing stores. I’m actually surprised they aren’t closing all the stores. I’d classify Radio Shack as equal to, if not worse than Walmart. It’s a last ditch option to visit Radio Shack.

Radio Shack used to be a useful store, back when they sold electronic components and had knowledgeable staff. Now they aren’t competing with anyone except themselves. They sell shitty electronic devices with higher prices and cell phones. The sales staff know nothing and are extremely pushy.

The last time I visited a Radio Shack, I went in to get a HDMI cable. (Yes, I know Radio Shack was a stupid place to go, but I was out of town setting up a entertainment center and it was the closest place that I figured would have it.) The pushy salesman asked if I wanted an extended warranty, for a fucking HDMI cable, which either works or doesn’t. After repeated failed attempts to get me to buy it, he switched to pushing batteries.

I’ve started to using Rdio at work so I have some music to listen to. I’ve been able to find lots of music that I love. But one of the best things I’ve found about Rdio is discovery.

Since I started using Rdio, I have found several new artists that I like. Every day I’m writing down a few albums to add to my iTunes library. I think since listening to Rdio, this has led to the largest growth of new artists my library has ever seen.

Watch the Stig take the Zenvo ST-1 around the Top Gear Test Track. There isn’t much if any full throttle use on this lap. I know Zenvo wasn’t happy about Top Gear’s review, but their car did break twice, including catching fire one of those times.

I liked the car, but it seems to have a few issues to work out before it is publicly available.

It has been a few years since Flash has been declared dead. Yet it still refuses to give up and disappear. Adobe continues to push this shitty, inferior, bug-ridden software. It causes nothing but problems.

I had Flash installed on my Mac Mini that I use as a media center. Ashley wanted to watch live streams of the Olympics and it required Flash. Of course the live streams didn’t work, and I forgot to uninstall Flash afterwards.

My Mini had a Flash update today, and because Flash is such an unsecure, bug-ridden piece of shit, I ran the update. Well, par for the course with Adobe software, it failed to install and froze up my computer. I had to force shutdown and restart it. I then proceeded to uninstall Flash.

I can’t figure out why Flash is still required for everything/anything. If I can watch something on my iPhone without any issues, then I don’t need fucking worthless Flash to watch it on my computer.

I’ve jailbroken every past iOS and iPhone I’ve had. Except for my iPhone 5S and iOS 7. There are some awesome jailbreak tweaks, and new ones are created every day. But as tempted as I am to jeailbreak, I’m also not tempted.

I think my biggest issue isn’t doing the jailbreak, or dealing with the chance that I’ll have an unstable device. My issue is going through the setup of all the tweaks I’d want to install. I know of several that I know I want to install, but then there are the hundreds and thousands of other apps, tweaks, and mods to sift through.

Last time I used Cydia, it still wasn’t a user friendly store (this may have changed recently). There is no way to sort out the awesome useful tweaks and apps from the shitty ones that only matter to three people because it does something extremely obscure.

I’ll probably end up breaking down and jailbreaking my iPhone. I really do miss some of the better tweaks, especially BiteSMS.